Olanna opened the door, wearing the apron that had an oil stain in front. His apron. She kissed Master. “I’ve asked Patel to come,” she said, and then turned to Ugwu’s mother. “Mama. Kedu?”
“I am well,” his mother whispered. She glanced around the room and seemed to shrink even more at the sight of the sofas, the radiogram, the curtains.
“I’ll take her inside,” Olanna said. “Ugwu, please finish in the kitchen and set the table.”
“Yes, mah.”
In the kitchen, Ugwu stirred the pot of pepper soup. The oily broth swirled, the hot spices wafted up and tickled his nose, and the pieces of meat and tripe floated from side to side. But he did not really notice. He was straining to hear something. It was long, too long, since Olanna had taken his mother in and Dr. Patel went in to join them. The peppers made his eyes water. He remembered that last time when she was sick from the coughing, how she cried out that she could no longer feel her legs and the dibia asked her to tell the evil spirits to leave her alone. “Tell them it is not yet your time! Gwa ha kita! Tell them now!” the dibia had urged her.
“Ugwu!” Master called. The guests had arrived. Ugwu went into the living room and his hands worked mechanically, serving kola nuts and alligator pepper, uncorking bottles, shoveling ice, laying out steaming bowls of pepper soup. Afterward, he sat down in the kitchen and pulled at his toenails and imagined what was going on in the bedroom. He could hear Master’s raised voice from the living room. “Nobody is saying that burning government property is a good thing, but to send the army in to kill in the name of order? There are Tiv people lying dead for nothing. For nothing! Balewa has lost his mind!”
Ugwu did not know who the Tiv people were, but hearing the word dead made him shiver. “It is not yet your time,” he whispered. “Not yet your time.”
“Ugwu?” Olanna was at the kitchen door.
He flew off the stool. “Mah? Mah?”
“You mustn’t worry about her. Dr. Patel says it’s an infection and she will be fine.”
“Oh!” Ugwu was so relieved he feared he would float away if he raised one leg. “Thank, mah!”
“Put the rest of the pottage in the fridge.”
“Yes, mah.” Ugwu watched her go back to the living room. The embroidery on her close-fitting dress gleamed and she looked, for a moment, like a shapely spirit who had emerged from the sea.
The guests were laughing now. Ugwu peeked into the living room. Many of them were no longer sitting upright but sloped on their seats, mellowed by alcohol, languorous with ideas. The evening was ending. The conversation would soften into tennis and music; then they would get up and giggle loudly at things that were not funny, such as the front door being difficult to open and the night bats flying too low. He waited for Olanna to go to the bathroom and Master to his study before he went in to see his mother, asleep, curled childlike on the bed.
She was bright-eyed the next morning. “I am well,” she said. “The medicine that doctor gave me is very powerful. But what will kill me is that smell.”
“What smell?”
“In their mouth. I smelled it when your madam and master came in to see me this morning and also when I went to ease myself.”
“Oh. That is toothpaste. We use it to clean our teeth.” Ugwu felt proud saying we, so that his mother would know that he too used it.
But she did not look impressed. She snapped her fingers and picked up her chewing stick. “What is wrong with using a good atu? That smell has made me want to vomit. If I stay here much longer I will not be able to keep food in my stomach because of that smell.”
She looked impressed, though, when Ugwu told her that he would be living in the Boys’ Quarters. It was like being given his own house, separate, all to himself. She asked him to show her the Boys’ Quarters, marveled that it was bigger than her hut, and, later, insisted that she was well enough to help in the kitchen. He watched her, bent over to sweep the floor, and remembered how she used to smack Anulika’s bottom for not bending properly to sweep. “Did you eat mushrooms? Sweep like a woman!” she would say, and Anulika would grumble that the broom was too short and it was not her fault that people were too stingy to buy longer brooms. Ugwu suddenly wished that Anulika were here, as well as the little children and the gossiping wives of his umunna. He wished his whole village were here, so he could join in the moonlight conversations and quarrels and yet live in Master’s house with its running taps and refrigerator and stove.
“I will go home tomorrow,” his mother said.
“You should stay a few more days and rest.”
“I will go tomorrow. I shall thank your master and mistress when they return and tell them I am well enough to go home. May another person do for them what they have done for me.”
Ugwu walked with her to the end of Odim Street in the morning. He had never seen her walk so fast, even with the twined bundle balanced on her head, never seen her face so free of lines.
“Stay well, my son,” she said, and thrust a chewing stick into his hand.
On the day Master’s mother arrived from the village, Ugwu cooked a peppery jollof rice. He mixed white rice into tomato sauce, tasted it, and then covered it and reduced the heat. He went back outside. Jomo had leaned his rake against the wall and was sitting on the steps eating a mango.
“That thing you are cooking smells very good,” Jomo said.
“It is for my master’s mother, jollof rice with fried chicken.”
“I should have given you some of my meat. It will be better than the chicken.” Jomo gestured to the bag tied behind his bicycle. He had shown Ugwu the small furry animal wrapped in fresh leaves.
“I cannot cook bush meat here!” Ugwu said in English, laughing.
Jomo turned to look at him. “Dianyi, you now speak English just like the children of the lecturers.”
Ugwu nodded, happy to hear the compliment, happier because Jomo would never guess that those children with their cream-pampered skin and their effortless English sniggered whenever Mrs. Oguike asked him a question because of how he pronounced his words, how thick his bush accent was.
“Harrison should come and hear good English from somebody who does not brag about it,” Jomo said. “He thinks he knows everything just because he lives with a white man. Onye nzuzu! Stupid man!”
“Very stupid man!” Ugwu said. He had been just as vigorous last weekend when he agreed with Harrison that Jomo was foolish.
“Yesterday the he-goat locked the tank and refused to give me the key,” Jomo said. “He said I am wasting water. Is it his water? Now if the plants die, what do I tell Mr. Richard?”
“That is bad.” Ugwu snapped his fingers to show just how bad. The last quarrel between the two men was when Harrison hid the lawn mower and refused to tell Jomo where it was until Jomo rewashed Mr. Richard’s shirt, which had been splattered with bird droppings. It was Jomo’s useless flowers, after all, that attracted the birds. Ugwu had supported both men. He told Jomo that Harrison was wrong to have hidden the lawn mower, and later he told Harrison that Jomo was wrong to have planted the flowers there in the first place, knowing they attracted birds. Ugwu preferred Jomo’s solemn ways and false stories, but Harrison, with his insistent bad English, was mysteriously full of knowledge of things that were foreign and different. Ugwu wanted to learn these things, so he nurtured his friendship with both men; he had become their sponge, absorbing much and giving little away.
“One day I will wound Harrison seriously, maka Chukwu,” Jomo said. He threw away the mango seed, sucked so clean of the orange pulp that it was white. “Somebody is knocking on the front door.”
“Oh. She has come! It must be my master’s mother.” Ugwu dashed inside; he barely heard Jomo say goodbye.
Master’s mother had the same stocky build, dark skin, and vibrant energy as her son; it was as if she would never need help with carrying her water pot or lowering a stack of firewood from her head. Ugwu was surprised to see the young woman with downcast eyes sta
nding beside her, holding bags. He had expected that she would come alone. He had hoped she would come a little later, too, when the rice was done.
“Welcome, Mama, nno,” he said. He took the bags from the young woman. “Welcome, Aunty, nno.”
“You are the one that is Ugwu? How are you?” Master’s mother said, patting his shoulder.
“Fine, Mama. Did your journey go well?”
“Yes. Chukwu du anyi. God led us.” She was looking at the radiogram. Her green george wrapper hung stiff on her waist and made her hips look square-shaped. She did not wear it with the air of the women on campus, the women who were used to owning coral beads and gold earrings. She wore it in the way that Ugwu imagined his mother would if she had the same wrapper: uncertainly, as if she did not believe that she was no longer poor.
“How are you, Ugwu?” she asked again.
“I am well, Mama.”
“My son has told me how well you are doing.” She reached out to adjust her green headgear, worn low on her head, almost covering her eyebrows.
“Yes, Mama.” Ugwu looked down modestly.
“God bless you, your chi will break away the rocks on your path. Do you hear me?” She sounded like Master, that sonorous and authoritative tone.
“Yes, Mama.”
“When will my son be back?”
“They will return in the evening. They said you should rest, Mama, when you come. I am cooking rice and chicken.”
“Rest?” She smiled and walked into the kitchen. Ugwu watched her unpack foodstuffs from a bag: dried fish and cocoyams and spices and bitter leaf. “Have I not come from the farm?” she asked. “This is my rest. I have brought ingredients to make a proper soup for my son. I know you try, but you are only a boy. What does a boy know about real cooking?” She smirked and turned to the younger woman, who was standing by the door, arms folded and eyes still downcast, as if waiting for orders. “Is that not so, Amala? Does a boy belong in the kitchen?”
“Kpa, Mama, no,” Amala said. She had a high-pitched voice.
“You see, Ugwu? A boy does not belong in the kitchen.” Master’s mother sounded triumphant. She was standing by the counter, already breaking up some dried fish, extracting the needlelike bones.
“Yes, Mama.” Ugwu was surprised that she had not asked for a glass of water or gone inside to change first. He sat on the stool and waited for her to tell him what to do. It was what she wanted; he could sense that. She was looking over the kitchen now. She peered suspiciously at the stove, knocked on the pressure cooker, tapped the pots with her fingers.
“Eh! My son wastes money on these expensive things,” she said. “Do you not see, Amala?”
“Yes, Mama,” Amala said.
“Those belong to my madam, Mama. She brought many things from Lagos,” Ugwu said. It irritated him: her assuming that everything belonged to Master, her taking command of his kitchen, her ignoring his perfect jollof rice and chicken.
Master’s mother did not respond. “Amala, come and prepare the cocoyams,” she said.
“Yes, Mama.” Amala put the cocoyams in a pot and then looked helplessly at the stove.
“Ugwu, light the fire for her. We are village people who only know firewood!” Master’s mother said, with a short laugh.
Neither Ugwu nor Amala laughed. Ugwu turned the stove on. Master’s mother threw a piece of dried fish into her mouth. “Put some water to boil for me, Ugwu, and then cut these ugu leaves for the soup.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Is there a sharp knife in this house?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Use it and slice the ugu well.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Ugwu settled down with a cutting board. He knew she was watching him. When he started to slice the fibrous pumpkin leaves, she yelped, “Oh! Oh! Is this how you cut ugu? Alu melu! Make them smaller! The way you are doing it, we might as well cook the soup with the whole leaves.”
“Yes, Mama.” Ugwu began slicing the leaves in strips so thin they would break up in the soup.
“That’s better,” Master’s mother said. “You see why boys have no business in the kitchen? You cannot even slice ugu well.”
Ugwu wanted to say, Of course I slice ugu well. I do many things in the kitchen better than you do, but instead he said, “My madam and I don’t slice vegetables, we shred them with our hands because the nutrients come out better that way.”
“Your madam?” Master’s mother paused. It was as if she wanted to say something but held herself back. The steam from boiling hung in the air. “Show Amala the mortar so she can pound the cocoyams,” she said finally.
“Yes, Mama.” Ugwu rolled out the wood mortar from under the table and was rinsing it when Olanna came home. She appeared at the kitchen door; her dress was smart-fitting, her smiling face was full of light.
“Mama!” she said. “Welcome, nno. I am Olanna. Did you go well?” She reached out to hug Master’s mother. Her arms went round to enclose the older woman but Master’s mother kept her hands to her sides and did not hug Olanna back.
“Yes, our journey went well,” she said.
“Good afternoon,” Amala said.
“Welcome.” Olanna hugged Amala briefly before turning to Master’s mother. “Is this Odenigbo’s relative from home, Mama?”
“Amala helps me in the house,” Master’s mother said. She had turned her back to Olanna and was stirring the soup.
“Mama, come, let’s sit down. Bia nodu ana. You should not bother in the kitchen. You should rest. Let Ugwu do it.”
“I want to cook a proper soup for my son.”
There was a light pause before Olanna said, “Of course, Mama.” Her Igbo had slipped into the dialect that Ugwu heard in Master’s speech when his cousins visited. She walked around the kitchen, as if eager to do something to please Master’s mother but uncertain what to do. She opened the pot of rice and closed it. “At least let me help you, Mama. I’ll go and change.”
“I hear you did not suck your mother’s breasts,” Master’s mother said.
Olanna stopped. “What?”
“They say you did not suck your mother’s breasts.” Master’s mother turned to look at Olanna. “Please go back and tell those who sent you that you did not find my son. Tell your fellow witches that you did not see him.”
Olanna stared at her. Master’s mother’s voice rose, as if Olanna’s continued silence had driven her to shouting. “Did you hear me? Tell them that nobody’s medicine will work on my son. He will not marry an abnormal woman, unless you kill me first. Only over my dead body!” Master’s mother clapped her hands, then hooted and slapped her palm across her mouth so that the sound echoed.
“Mama—” Olanna said.
“Don’t mama me,” Master’s mother said. “I said, Do not mama me. Just leave my son alone. Tell your fellow witches that you did not find him!” She opened the back door and went outside and shouted. “Neighbors! There is a witch in my son’s house! Neighbors!” Her voice was shrill. Ugwu wanted to gag her, to stuff sliced vegetables into her mouth. The soup was burning.
“Mah? Will you stay in the room?” he asked, moving toward Olanna.
Olanna seemed to get hold of herself. She tucked a braid behind her ear, picked up her bag from the table, and headed for the front door. “Tell your master I have gone to my flat,” she said.
Ugwu followed her and watched as she got into her car and drove out. She did not wave. The yard was still; there were no butterflies flitting among the white flowers. Back in the kitchen, Ugwu was surprised to hear Master’s mother singing a gently melodious church song: Nya nya oya mu ga-ana. Na m metu onu uwe ya aka. …
She stopped singing and cleared her throat. “Where has that woman gone?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” Ugwu said. He walked over to the sink and began to put away the clean plates in the cupboard. He hated the too-strong aroma of her soup that filled the kitchen; the first thing he would do after she left was wash all the curtains becau
se that smell would soak into them.
“This is why I came. They said she is controlling my son,” Master’s mother said, stirring the soup. “No wonder my son has not married while his mates are counting how many children they have. She has used her witchcraft to hold him. I heard her father came from a family of lazy beggars in Umunnachi until he got a job as a tax collector and stole from hardworking people. Now he has opened many businesses and is walking around in Lagos and answering a Big Man. Her mother is no better. What woman brings another person to breastfeed her own children when she herself is alive and well? Is that normal, gbo, Amala?”
“No, Mama.” Amala’s eyes focused on the floor as if she were tracing patterns on it.
“I heard that all the time she was growing up, it was servants who wiped her ike when she finished shitting. And on top of it, her parents sent her to university. Why? Too much schooling ruins a woman; everyone knows that. It gives a woman a big head and she will start to insult her husband. What kind of wife will that be?” Master’s mother raised one edge of her wrapper to wipe the sweat from her brow. “These girls that go to university follow men around until their bodies are useless. Nobody knows if she can have children. Do you know? Does anyone know?”
“No, Mama,” Amala said.
“Does anyone know, Ugwu?”
Ugwu placed a plate down noisily and pretended as if he had not heard her. She came over and patted his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, my son will find a good woman and he will not send you away after he marries.”
Perhaps agreeing with the woman would make her exhaust herself quicker and shut her mouth. “Yes, Mama,” he said.
“I know how hard my son worked to get where he is. All that is not to be wasted on a loose woman.”
“No, Mama.”
“I do not mind where the woman my son will marry comes from. I am not like those mothers who want to find wives for their sons only from their own hamlet. But I do not want a Wawa woman, and none of those Imo or Aro women, of course; their dialects are so strange I wonder who told them that we are all the same Igbo people.”